Ice covers Baltic Sea all the way down to Swedish island of Gotland

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The Baltic Sea currently has the most extensive ice cover that it has seen in 24 years. On Thursday, 310,000 square kilometres of the sea were covered in ice, and the area is growing.
      After the severe winter of 1987, the ice cover in the Baltic was nearly 400,000 square kilometres wide, which in practical terms means that the entire surface of the Baltic was effectively covered in ice. The entire sea has been completely frozen over just 20 times since 1720.
      The ice is at its thickest in coastal areas of the northern reaches of the Gulf of Bothnia, where it has reached a thickness of 75 centimetres. The ice is also 75 cm. thick off St. Petersburg in the eastern reaches of the Gulf of Finland.
     
The ice extends to the southern tip of the Swedish island of Öland. The area between the island of Gotland and the Swedish mainland is covered in ice, but there is still open water on the east coast of Gotland.
      Off the coast of Lithuania, the ice extends nearly 50 nautical miles from the coast, and there is ice off the Polish coast as well. There is open water mainly in the southern part of the Baltic.
     
Temperatures are expected to rise during the weekend. Strong winds of up to 20 metres a second are expected in parts of the Gulf of Bothnia.
      Strong winds can cause ice to pack up and block harbour entrances.
      Ilmari Aro, head of the winter maritime unit of the Finnish Transport Agency, says that ships should avoid sailing in stormy seas with packed ice.
      “When the winds start blowing, ships will not be let out of the harbour before the situation has calmed down again. Ships can be damaged by the ice.”
     
Packed ice can pile up and form barriers up to seven metres thick.
      Usually attempts are made to sail around barriers of packed ice, but if a channel is narrow, attempts are made to push through the barriers.
      “A merchant ship is left to wait in an area where the ice is not so thick. An icebreaker will build up speed and try to ram through, then go into reverse, and repeat the process, until a gap is made in the packed ice”, Aro describes.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Passenger ships stuck in ice for hours off Swedish coast (5.3.2010)
  Russian nuclear icebreaker races to help in Gulf of Finland (22.2.2011)
  More than 60 vessels stuck in ice in Gulf of Finland (17.2.2011)

Links:
  BALTICE - Baltic Icebreaking Management

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